Altilium secures a patent for its EcoCathode battery recycling process

The UK Intellectual Property Office has granted Altilium a patent, the company’s first, covering the process behind its EcoCathode battery recycling technology. The grant gives the clean-tech company protection over the method that it plans to scale from pilot operations to commercial production.

The patent, GB2637908B, is titled “Material Recovery Method and Use.” It covers a hydrometallurgical process for recovering, purifying and regenerating cathode materials from end-of-life lithium-ion batteries. The process converts “black mass,” the metal-rich powder left after end-of-life batteries are shredded, into battery-grade cathode materials in a closed-loop system that returns critical minerals to the UK’s battery supply chain.

Altilium says the route recovers and regenerates battery-grade cathode materials directly, without the intermediate products that conventional recycling often ships overseas for further refining. The process is designed to reduce energy use, greenhouse gas emissions and reliance on imported critical minerals.

The process has been run at industrially representative scale through R&D projects with automotive OEMs, supported by the Advanced Propulsion Centre. Independent validation by Imperial College London found that Altilium’s recycled materials deliver performance comparable to that of virgin mined materials.

The patent forms the foundation of a broader international portfolio, and Altilium says corresponding applications are progressing in other major jurisdictions. The portfolio includes the recovery of cathode active materials (CAM), anode active materials (AAM) and other critical materials, which the company says underpin its recycling facilities, including a plant in Plymouth and future large-scale battery materials production.

“Intellectual property is fundamental to our strategy as we scale our technology from pilot operations to commercial production,” said co-founder and COO Christian Marston. “Our process enables critical battery metals to be recovered and regenerated into battery-grade materials with dramatically lower carbon emissions than traditional mining and refining.”

Source: Altilium